Friderika Baldinger

Dorothea Friderika Baldinger ( born Dorothea Friderika Gutbier ; born September 9, 1739 in Großengottern , † January 1786 in Kassel ) was a German writer .

Life

Ernst Gottfried Baldinger

Friderika Baldinger was born in 1739 as the daughter of pastor Johann Christian Gutbier (1705–10 April 1744) and Elisabeth Gutbier, née. Lanzenberger was born in Thuringia . The father died shortly after the family moved to Langensalza . Friderika was four years old at the time.

During a stay in Torgau in 1761, Friderika met the physician Ernst Gottfried Baldinger , who took part in the Seven Years' War as a Prussian military doctor . The two married in Ufhoven in 1764 , and their first child Sophie Friederike Ernestine Baldinger was born on November 27, 1765.

In 1768 Ernst Gottfried Baldinger became a full professor of medicine at the University of Jena , so that the family moved to Jena . The following years Friderika Baldinger devoted herself to her duties as a housewife and mother. A call as a full professor of medicine at the University of Göttingen , which Ernst Gottfried Baldinger accepted, led the family to move again. In the following year Friderika Baldinger lost two sons, her third oldest son Johann Friedrich Karl Baldinger had already died the previous year.

From 1778 to 1782 Friderika Baldinger wrote her main work, An attempt on my intellectual education , which was suggested by her husband and friends. In 1782 the family moved to Kassel, where Ernst Gottfried Baldinger taught medicine at the Collegium Carolinum . In addition, he entered the service of Landgrave Friedrich II of Hessen-Kassel as a councilor and personal physician . In the following year, two works by Friderika Baldinger appeared in the magazine for women . The letter about the old Plesse Castle near Gottingen. A letter from Madame *** to HK in C. was followed by the short essay Admonitions from a mother to her daughter. On the confirmation day .

The exact date of Friderika Baldinger's death is unknown. She died in Kassel in 1786 and was buried between January 11th and 16th.

Try about my mind training

Front page of the book Biography of Friderika Baldinger , 1791.

Friderika Baldinger wrote her main work, attempt on my intellectual education between 1778 and 1782. Although Ernst Gottfried Baldinger was positive about the publication of the work, Friderika Baldinger refused to have her work printed. It therefore appeared for the first time posthumously in 1791 under the title Biography of Friderika Baldinger, written by herself. At the express request of Ernst Gottfried Baldinger, the work was published by the well-known writer Sophie von La Roche , who, as a long-time friend of the author, also wrote the foreword.

In her work, Friderika Baldinger describes the path of her intellectual education. Her father, whom she remembers as very wise, died too early to be able to teach her. Your upbringing is determined by two opposing groups of people. Her mother and her uncle Johann Gabriel Lanzenberger stand for an education that the girl wants to commit to her later activities as a housewife and mother. Especially for her mother, piety and chastity are seen as the main virtues of women. Friderika Baldinger should therefore not read any other books apart from the Bible and the hymn book. Friderika Baldinger, who says she was able to read at the age of three, perfects her reading skills by reading the Bible.

In her work, Friderika Baldinger opposes these views typical of the time with four learned men who supported her desire for education. She received her first intellectual education from her brother Ernst Friedrich Gutbier, who studied theology in Wittenberg , began an exchange of letters with his sister and later taught her. The friendship with the preacher Johann Wilhelm von Kranichfeld led to such an intensive education as that to Georg Christoph Lichtenberg and Abraham Gotthelf Kästner . Lichtenberg met Friderika Baldinger in Göttingen. In his correspondence with her in 1777 the scholar, satirist and aphorist developed the two treatises On the Power of Love and the Fragment of Tails . The friendship with Abraham Gotthelf Kästner also developed in the years in which Friderika Baldinger lived in Göttingen, but survived this time and only came to an end with her death in 1786.

literature

• Sophie von La Roche (Hrsg.): Biography of Friderika Baldinger written by herself. Edited and accompanied by a preface by Sophie, widow of la Roche. Ulrich Weiß and Carl Ludwig Brede, Offenbach 1791.
• Magdalene Heuser et al. (Ed.): "I really wish to be taught". Three autobiographies by 18th century women. Wallstein, Göttingen 1994, ISBN 3-89244-075-1 .
• Rebekka Habermas : Friderika Baldinger and her male praise: Gender debates of the Enlightenment, in: Heide Wunder u. Gisela Engel (ed.): Gender perspectives: Research on the early modern period. Königstein / Taunus 1998, 242-254.
• Ortrun Niethammer: Autobiographies of Women in the 18th Century. Francke, Tübingen 2000, ISBN 3-7720-2760-1 , pp. 101-132 (at the same time: Osnabrück, Univ., Habil.-Schr., 1999).
• Hans-Joachim Maier: Friderika Baldinger. Paradigm of a female demand for education. In: Hans-Joachim Maier: Between determination and autonomy. Upbringing, education and love in the eighteenth century women's novel. A literary-sociological study of Christian F. Gellert's life of the Swedish Countess von G *** and Sophie von LaRoche's story of Fraulein von Sternheim. Olms-Weidmann, Hildesheim et al. 2001, ISBN 3-487-11300-7 , pp. 172-182 ( German texts and studies 65), (at the same time: Freiburg i. Br., Univ., Diss., 2000).
• Ruth P. Dawson: “'Lights out! Lights out! ' Women and the Enlightenment. " In: Marion Gray u. Ulrike Gleixner (ed.): Gender in Transition: Discourse and Practice in German-Speaking Europe, 1750-1830. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor ISBN 978-0-472-09943-6 , 2006, 218-45.
• Ruth P. Dawson: "Between the Spinning Wheel and the Book: Friderika Baldinger (1739-86)." In Dawson: The Contested Quill: Literature by Women in Germany 1770-1880. University of Delaware, Newark, Del. 2002, ISBN 978-0-87413-762-0 , 37-91.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ She grew up with two siblings, brother Johann Christian Gutbier (1734–1761) and sister Johanne Christiane Gutbier.
2. ↑ Friderika Baldinger was the mother of six children: Sophie Friderike Ernestine (* 1765), Ernst Friedrich (1767–1784), Friderike Wilhelmine Amalie , married. von Gehren (* 1768), Christian Ernst Wilhelm (1770–1774), Johann Friedrich Karl (1772–1773) and Johann Friedrich Carl (1773–1774).
3. ↑ The magazine published by David Christoph Seybold was intended to improve the education of women and was published from 1782 to 1786.
4. ↑ Magdalene Heuser u. a. (Ed.): "I really wish to be taught". Three autobiographies by 18th century women . Wallstein, Göttingen 1994, p. 186.
5. ^ Letter to Sophie von La Roche, May 16, 1783.
6. ↑ Magdalene Heuser u. a. (Ed.): "I really wish to be taught". Three autobiographies by 18th century women . Wallstein, Göttingen 1994, p. 192.
7. ↑ In memory of Friderika Baldinger, Kästner wrote the short poem Fr. Hofrathinn Baldinger's tombstone .